Monthly Archives: December 2014

View 853 Saturday, December 06, 2014

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Peggy Noonan’s recent column in the Wall Street Journal ought to be required reading for every Republican Member of Congress and Senator. Her political analysis is very much on target, and her view is is correct: she was, after all, one of Reagan’s best speech writers. And Reagan paid a very great deal of attention to his speeches: he was a better speech writer than any of his staff, but he had a country to run so some of it had to be farmed out. But he insisted that all his speeches be from his view, that of a what might be called “populist conservatism”. He wasn’t one of the country club establishment Republicans who don’t seem to have read the parts of Adam Smith that deal with fair play to workers while you establish a free market society. He well understood that a system has to be fair to the middle class as well as the top earners.

Can the GOP Find Unity and Purpose?

The Democrats are divided. The Republicans need to resist Obama’s provocations.

By

Peggy Noonan

Updated Dec. 5, 2014 6:27 p.m. ET

Take no bait. Act independently and in accord with national priorities. Cause no pointless trouble. If there’s trouble, it should have a clear, understandable, defendable purpose.

That is general advice for the new Republican congressional majority. They will be proving every day they’re a serious governing alternative to the Democratic-dominated establishment that has run Washington for six years.

The Republicans are being told they are a deeply divided party. True enough. But another way to look at it may prove more pertinent: “My father’s house has many mansions.” The GOP is showing early signs of actually gathering together again a functioning coalition. The white working class, according to the last election, has joined, at least for now. Coalitions are messy; they have many, often opposing, pieces. FDR ’s included New York socialists, Southern segregationists, Dust Bowl Okies and West Virginia coal miners. But politics is a game of addition and Republicans are adding. They may owe it only to President Obama, but still: His leadership has been an emanation of progressive thought. And a coalition formed by reaction and rejection is still a coalition.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/can-the-gop-find-unity-and-purpose-1417737255

I am enheartened to see that the neo-conservatives have an editorial in their Weekly Standard to the same effect. It is not signed by one of the major figures in the Weekly Standard hierarchy, but it is in the editorial section following a William Kristol editorial, which gives is gravitas.

Crêpes Suzette or Pie?

Dec 8, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 13 • By IRWIN M. STELZER

So we’ve done it: wrested control of the Senate from the do-nothing Democrats. But who are “we”? Are we the corporatist conservatives who fret that high marginal tax rates are stifling the risk-taking of wealthy investors, that business taxes are too high, that the entitlement state is unsustainable? Or are “we” the populist conservatives who worry about bank bailouts, dislike bonuses set by buddy-buddy boards, and believe with Adam Smith that workers are entitled to a decent wage and that free trade is fine so long as its beneficiaries, the winners, concede some of their gains to the losers? As Frank Sinatra might have put it: Are we crêpes suzette or pie? Wall Street or pawn shop? Country club or ballpark?

In practical terms, do “we” care more about businesses’ desire for lower taxes, free trade regardless of its effect on income distribution, asset-bloating monetary policy, and wage-shrinking immigration policy, or are “we” to have as our first priority the improvement of the living standard of disaffected middle-class voters, many of whom stayed home in the recent elections in despair of casting a vote that might improve their lot? If “we” are to be populist conservatives, what ought “we” be doing?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/cr-pes-suzette-or-pie_820203.html

The entire article is very much worth reading.

We can hope that these sentiments prevail. George H. W. Bush entered the White House in triumph. The first thing he did was rid himself of the Reaganites, who were too populist for his tastes. He conducted foreign policy in a triumphalist manner – we won The Cold War! “Read my lips, no new taxes!”  Oops.  Well maybe some new taxes “Read my hips ha ha ha.” The result was that he lost the next election. Two years after that Newt Gingrich put together a new coalition which took control of Congress. The Republican Establishment proceeded to run Bob Dole, WW II hero and very much accepted establishment Republican.  He lost to Clinton, although the Republicans retained the House. Then Newt self-destructed and the establishment was back. They went mad as if they had some kind of heroic mandate.  We invaded Iraq. Mission Accomplished! Only, somehow, it wasn’t. No Child Left Behind! Centralize control of education! Oops.

We can hope that the country club establishment Republicans have learned their lesson. It is not entirely clear that they have.

Fort Hood victims set to receive Purple Hearts, combat status | Fox News

Looks like some people in Government know what the attack was

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/04/fort-hood-victims-set-to-receive-purple-hearts-combat-status/?intcmp=latestnews

John T Smith

Fort Hood victims set to receive Purple Hearts, combat status

By Susan Crabtree

Published December 04, 2014

Washington Examiner

Congress is set to make victims of the 2009 Fort Hood shootings eligible for Purple Hearts and combat injury benefits after the Obama administration has denied them the status for the past five years.

House Republicans, working with the Democratic-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee, added a provision to the defense authorization bill that would give battlefield recognition for the victims of the deadliest attack on a domestic military installation in U.S. history. It passed on a voice vote with strong bipartisan support.

The measure, which is expected to pass Congress next week, also would end a five-year effort by Texas GOP Reps. John Carter, Michael Conaway and Roger Williams to give the victims the status, the Military Times first reported.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/04/fort-hood-victims-set-to-receive-purple-hearts-combat-status/?intcmp=latestnews\

And of course it’s about time: but it does show that the Republicans can work with the Democrats on matters of national interest and fair play.

Saudi Arabia’s Power Play

Well, this is interesting:

<.>

Saudi Arabia’s influential royal Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud has said the kingdom would only consider cutting oil production if Iran, Russia and the US agreed to match those cuts because it wants to protect its market share.

Speaking in London, the Prince who is a senior Saudi royal and the former head of the country’s spy agency, said that the kingdom would not repeat previous mistakes of surrendering its share of the global market for crude to its rivals. His remarks come just days after a controversial meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), when the group appeared split over a decision to keep producing at current levels.

"The kingdom is not going to give up market share at this time to anybody and allow – whether it is Russia, Nigeria, or Iran or other places – to sell oil to Saudi customer," said Prince Turki, who has also held Saudi Arabia top overseas diplomatic post as the kingdom’s ambassador to the US.

<..>

He add that Saudi has "accumulated a lot of reserves over the last few years that will go someway to meet our requirements" and that is "big oil producers like Russia and Iran that need a certain price level to maintain their (economic) equanimity."

</>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11268611/OPEC-Saudi-Prince-says-Riyadh-wont-cut-oil-unless-others-follow.html

I have some remarks:

First, our oil companies have larger business in areas other than shale; so these companies can wait for Saud.

Second, the American people want cheap oil and we get that with shale or with Saud’s games.

Third, this squeezes Russia and U.S. policy makers will like that.

Fourth, this squeezes Iran and U.S. policy makers will like that.

Fifth, this squeezes — may endangers — Venezuela and U.S. policy makers will like that.

And, finally, Saudi Arabia seems to be losing control and I think almost everyone but the House of Saud likes that.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Technology just keeps moving forward….some recent examples are shown

Feeling old? Don’t. Here are some examples that might make you feel even older. Or maybe we’re remembering things we read in science fiction – that makes these look like old ideas. The waste basket was in an L. Ron Hubbard story. 😉

Best,

Bill

Here are 17 examples of evidence that we are already living in a futuristic world.

The world’s first virtual shopping center opened in Korea. All the products are just LCD screens that allow you to order the items by touching the screen. When you get to the counter, your items are already bagged and ready to go.

futuristic things<http://data.ba-bamail.com/Images/2014/6/3/804de7ad-1724-4c1d-b327-d599b696f194.jpg>

A cellphone you can bend as much as you like and it will still do everything a smart phone does.

futuristic things<http://data.ba-bamail.com/Images/2014/6/3/efdb80e8-5dc7-4b46-bfc8-7adaddc32524.jpg>

Your personal computer ring can play music, check your email, give you alerts and even allows you to browse or chat with others.

http://imgur.com/ZQwtMCf <http://imgur.com/ZQwtMCf>

This man is demonstrating the ability of his prosthetic eye, which has a camera installed in it.

futuristic things<http://data.ba-bamail.com/Images/2014/6/3/4829edd8-ceb8-41ad-b9e7-be84f9dd6ab0.jpg>

No longer using the camping stove just for cooking, a new line of camping stoves use the heat energy to power up lights and charge your phones or anything else you can charge by USB cable.

futuristic things<http://data.ba-bamail.com/Images/2014/6/3/e82be301-873e-4a86-b369-8601adef680c.jpg>

This trash can follows you around and calculates where to stand to catch your thrown garbage!

http://imgur.com/5Qnzl8D <http://imgur.com/5Qnzl8D>

This motion tracking table morphs its surface to mimic your movements, allowing you to control objects from the other side of the planet if you so choose.

http://imgur.com/Il8qIAP <http://imgur.com/Il8qIAP>

This windowed door turns opaque whenever you lock it.

http://imgur.com/L3F2wRc <http://imgur.com/L3F2wRc>

This incredible app translates signs from video and in real time!

http://imgur.com/e9auC4t <http://imgur.com/e9auC4t>

The new ‘Google Fiber’ has started deploying, and will offer users an internet connection that is about 100 times faster than what they are currently using.

futuristic things<http://data.ba-bamail.com/Images/2014/6/3/274f65ad-720c-440e-b9b6-7d9febea5783.jpg>

When did car panels start looking like this advanced?

futuristic things<http://data.ba-bamail.com/Images/2014/6/3/0831e92e-d3b5-42bf-bc81-0e6d0e5bb69d.jpg>

A stop sign using water to project the image http://imgur.com/CQWbK6A <http://imgur.com/CQWbK6A>

An example of the new E-Ink in action. An ink that stay flat on the page and can be printed but still moves on the printer page.

http://imgur.com/lhzHEWi <http://imgur.com/lhzHEWi>

All of the functions these items that we used 20 years ago… Are now done by a single smartphone.

futuristic things<http://data.ba-bamail.com/Images/2014/6/3/a708dd96-638c-41cc-a141-c9f290d4faaf.jpg>

New casts can be printed with a 3D printer, are lighter, more comfortable and just as strong.

futuristic things<http://data.ba-bamail.com/Images/2014/6/3/2a5623d9-c12b-42d3-b6d5-66f0d3d17aef.jpg>

Bionic hands are now so advanced they can perform even delicate and complex movements.

http://imgur.com/PCYBZe6 <http://imgur.com/PCYBZe6>

Wonderful! I am glad to see that a real five fingered hand able to use tools developed over centuries for humans is now practical. Many years ago Marvin Minsky convinced me that this was an essential for using robots in space, and I have been hopeful ever since.

All the other marvels are worth your attention as well. Technology marches on.  Moore’s Law is inexorable, and each doubling produces more new marvels as well as makes the old marvels affordable. We approach, not the singularity, but an era of plenty, provided that we are able to control all this and keep our economy – and stay strong enough to keep it.  Wealthy Republics have not done well in history.  Rome had to go Imperial, as did Greece.

Education potential predicted by proficiency

Dr. Pournelle,

I probably didn’t state it at all clearly before, but besides the apparent cultural bias, it truly seems as if those who do well on standardized IQ tests are already doing well in their academic studies. The tail seems to wag the dog, here. Applying test batteries to service recruits or aerospace employees tells you how they’ve done thus far, but we can agree that this is, as you say, a very good indicator of how they should perform in future.

My personal academic experience has been that I’ve done well in assessments, batteries, ASVAB, and IQ tests, but others who scored lower seemed to have better academic success in some (many, most) areas of study. A >120 IQ and tested high mathematical ability does not guarantee success in study (never "mastery") of calculus, but does show that the individual can comprehend the test and follow instructions.

When students will come from a wide distribution of ability ratings, it is usually most efficient to design course work around a student of "average" capabilities — although that "average" is usually somewhere to the right from center on the bell curve. As you say, such a course design isn’t satisfactory for those that rate at either end of the distribution, but in military and industrial training circles I’ve run in, the ones on extreme left can be discarded and those on the extreme right can sometimes get more advanced training — alternatives not allowed in school systems. These settings are quite different from schools in student motivation, and usually in student maturity.

I’ve nothing but admiration for Mrs. Pournelle or any teacher who can succeed in educating children in any school system.

-d

The important point is that the predictions will not be racially proportional to the population, although the race of the subjects is not known at any point. If we are to allocate out educational resources in anything like an optimal manner, we must dedicate the necessary efforts to bring out excellence. Civilization does not advance by adding a little bit to the skill sets of the not very skilled; civilization is better off developing to their highest the skills and knowledge of the best. Resources ought to be allocated to that end. I have no objection to those who want to work at the head start level to increase the number of minorities who score at higher levels; but refusing to use the tools we have to allocate our resources because the predictions are not racially proportionate to the population is a disastrous policy; as is any policy that sends the less competent into training they cannot profit from. And the best thing Head Start could do is teach the kids to read before the education establishment gets to them, but it does not and will not. Newt Gingrich tried to make that happen, but he could not.  I don’t think anyone else has tried.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 853 Tuesday, December 02, 2014

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

I have a number of letters from people who try to account for differences in means IQ among races – a phenomenon found and confirmed so often that it must be assumed to be true – by various factors, the most common of which is culture. A number of competent differential psychologists who would have wished to find that all those differences can be truly accounted for by cultural (and thus changeable) factors have devoted a great deal of effort to trying to prove that, and to eliminate all cultural factors from IQ tests, but they have not been able to do so.

From my view it doesn’t matter. I have my theories of what IQ tests measure, but the utility of the tests doesn’t depend on what they measure. As far as I am concerned, IQ can be defined as what IQ tests measure. Maybe it doesn’t measure intelligence, whatever that is. It measures “g”, but that is itself defined from the results of tests. What is important is that something like IQ can be measured by a number of tests. The “IQ” assigned to a given individual by a number of these tests will correlate highly from one test to another, as will the test-retest reliability. The tests are constructed to produce this result by people highly skilled in mathematics, statistics, and semantics, and every item in each commonly used test is there because it contributes to the overall result.

IQ is useful even if we do not know what it “really” is, because it is the best single measure we have for predicting academic success. Actually, IQ is about the best single predictor of success for almost any complex human activity, but the one we are interested in is academic success because teaching and education is the largest cost item in every State budget, and the schools consume a lot of government activity – and taxes.

IQ tests are the best predictors we have for academic success. If we are going to invest public money, collected by armed tax collectors, we are entitled to ask that the money be well spent: which is to say that if we are going to invest in an expensive public education, the money ought to go to someone who will learn something from that expensive experience. By law we cannot use race in selecting the individuals in whom we will invest. We really shouldn’t even know what their race is.

And therein lies the problem. There is no single item in any IQ test that identifies the race of the person taking that test. Any such item, if there ever were any, has long since been eliminated. You may look at IQ tests until you are blue in the face and you won’t find the “racial code” items, because they are not there. A lot of very smart people have worked hard to see to that.

But IQ tests do predict academic success. And the University of Washington developed a Grade Prediction Program that did much more. I worked on it as a graduate student. The experiment was paid for by Navy Research.

Basically, for all incoming freshmen, we took measures of almost anything you can think of that might affect academic grades, and recorded the grades those students achieved in four years of instruction at the University of Washington. We recorded high school class rank, and grades in high school subject areas. We gave batteries of tests to the incoming freshmen. We took ratings and estimates from counselors (which were not easy to get because counselors are not accustomed to making numerical estimates, and sure enough, they weren’t much use in the final predictions). We even threw in height and weight. We did not record race, religion, national origin, or socio-economic status.

All this stuff went into a huge matrix, one line of a couple of dozen predictors for each student. Then over time we built another matrix, one line of grade results for each person. This whole thing then went into a huge program to find the correlation of each item in the predictors with each item in the results. This would be a number from 0 to 0.99; actually I think the highest predictor item was about 0.8, which was IQ. Many of the predictors were near enough to zero that it could reasonably be concluded that they could be eliminated. There were one or two predictors that correlated highly with some fields of study and not at all with others; the formula was adjusted for that so these predictors were only used in prediction of relevant academic areas.

And lo! After a few years of taking results and honing the prediction equations, every incoming freshman was given a grade prediction for a number of academic area. Be a math major and you will be an A student, but you will flunk out of biology. Actually, of course, that would be a rare result: people who were predicted to be A students in any area were likely to have higher predictions for other areas. An A prediction in engineering would very likely to be accompanied by an A prediction as an education major. Of course an prediction of an A average in Education was not necessarily accompanied by the prediction of an A in anything else.

The program was successful, but it is no longer used, because the average grades predicted for Black and Hispanic students was lower than the average grades predicted for White students. There was no single item in any test that identified the race of the student, but those who set out to prove this thesis managed to find that out.

And that, I put it to you, is the reason that the mean differences in IQ test scores among the races is important.

If you want to invest your education resources in those who will learn the most – and therefore, presumably, earn enough to keep the economy growing, thus justifying the investment of tax resources in education, you must use tests that include IQ tests to select who will go into engineering, who into education, who into sociology, and who ought to go to junior college and learn some salable skills. But if you do this, then you will find that the numbers of those predicted to have high success will include more Ashkenazi Jews. North Asian, and American Whites, than their average presence in the population, and fewer Hispanics and Blacks; while the numbers of those advised to get out of the university and go to junior college or into apprenticeship will include fewer Whites, Asians and Jews, and more Hispanics and Blacks. That is an inevitable result. There is no way to “correct for it. The IQ factor is always important in any prediction of academic success.

It seems to me that the answer to this is to fix the schools: rather than blame the tests, and force universities to allocate their resources in lower than optimum ways, try sending them better qualified students. If people have lower IQ because of some cultural bias, and IQ is a good predictor of academic success, then raise the IQ in primary school, or grade school, or middle school, by countering the cultural effects. Of course that’s what Head Start rather expensively attempts to do, but it hasn’t succeeded.

Another way would be to forget race and allocate academic resources to those who will most benefit from them, Black, Hispanic, White, Asian or Jew.

Ben Stein speculates at

http://spectator.org/articles/61133/it-can%E2%80%99t-rain-hard-enough

…

Phil gave me a tablet device for me to use on trips. I was worried about it, but I took it to my local Beverly Hills Verizon store. It was supposedly a Verizon-oriented machine.

Ooops. The young man there had no idea ­ and I mean NONE ­ of how to set up this device. Okay. I tried to buy a battery from him for my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Notes 2 phone. Ooops, again.

Incredibly, Verizon stores do not sell Verizon phone batteries. Can that be true?

Meanwhile, four other customers came into the store and the clerk could not help them with anything.

There is a bit of a lesson here: we economists are worried about productivity that is rising much more slowly than it used to rise. No one seems to know why. But I have an idea. Because our workers are so poorly educated relative to the tasks they are called on to perform that they are a dead weight on the economy.

Maybe the collapse of education is actually finally taking its toll. It was bound to and now it is.

…

Best regards,

–Harry M.

When you sow the wind, you may predict the crop. We have known since 1983 that the education system is indistinguishable from an act of war on the people of the United States. Apparently we like it that way.

Black police officer

Dr. Pournelle,

Much is made of the use of white police officers in neighborhoods that are heavily black. Another commentator made the point that assigning black officers to these areas would be discrimination against the black officers in that they would be assigned the most dangerous neighborhoods because of the color of their skin. What has so far been missed is the reason there are so few black police officers.

As I write this I am a former auto-mechanic, sometime lumber mill worker, and at full-time prosecutor. I went to law school late in life and I am at present a Deputy Attorney General for the California Department of Justice in the Criminal Law Division and assigned to the trial team. The observations I make here are my own and they are informed by my experience as a Deputy District Attorney and Deputy Attorney General in California.

So far, I have not seen anyone talk about what is required in order to become a police officer. The requirements are daunting. I have participated in background investigations and I have been the subject of background investigations. I suspect the background investigation for a peace officer position in a large department is as exhaustive or perhaps more exhaustive than that required for a top secret clearance.

In the personal history questionnaire the applicant will be required to disclose every embarrassing or negative fact about their lives from the time they were born. I know an applicant for the California Highway Patrol who was failed on their background because they attended a party where other people were smoking marijuana. The personal history covers arrests, detentions, charges, convictions, credit history, contact information for wives and ex-wives and so on. It is exhaustive. Depending on the agency traffic tickets or a poor credit score can disqualify the applicant.

The statistic for the number of black men and women who are convicted by "the system" is quoted because it is very much greater than the percentage of white men and women. Yet those are things that disqualify a person from a career in law enforcement. If blacks are 13% of the population and disqualified at a higher rate because of their conduct from a job in law enforcement, it is not surprising they are under-represented. This is not a problem that is readily amenable to solution. Consider, that black men and women who would otherwise qualify for law enforcement careers are lower than the percentage than that of other applicants and they are readily employable in any field they might choose.

The solution, if one exists, must include bringing black people into the mainstream; there must be shared values and shared expectations. The perception of discrimination based on skin color must be erased. When there are other reasons for discrimination, that can be explained as discrimination based on skin color exist, the perception that the discrimination is based on skin color is validated, at least in the minds of some people.

Finally, I have to wonder what our president meant when he encouraged protest. The legal process worked; the grand jury determined there was not enough credible evidence to indict. The evidence needed to indict is far short of what is needed to convict. The officer is not criminally culpable. It is important that we have a process and the officer was subject to indictment and prosecution. So, what is there to protest?

There is a great deal we need to do, but none of it was accomplished by the protests.

Brian

A-10

Dr. Pournelle,

I don’t have any background or education in aviation. My viewpoint is that of an enlisted Marine Fire Direction Control Computer back in the days when "sticks" were faster and much more reliable than the Texas Instruments or Freddie FADAC options.

While the logistics of keeping the Warthog flying is beyond my ken, I am confident in saying that Marines on the ground would love Marine pilots in A-10s shaping the battlefield. Adaptation to being carrier-based is probably out of the question and maybe the FA-18 can do the job. Still, we have the plane, we have ground units which could exploit the plane’s capabilities and we will probably be faced with an enemy who is susceptible to the weapons system for the foreseeable future.

There are probably difficulties beyond my imagination in bringing the A-10 into the USMC inventory, but it seems to me that the A-10 and the Marine Corps grunts is a marriage made in Heaven for a job made in Hell.

Sincerely,

A.S. Clifton

I’m sure. But the Army needs them too. It’s good to have a flying tank. And of course they are only useful if you have air supremacy where they are to be used.

Recommended places to look:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/02/how-digital-maps-changing-the-way-we-understand-world?CMP=ema_565

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141124/17553429244/wtf-atf-atfs-fake-retail-stores-bad-behavior-why-it-only-came-out-because-they-failed-to-pay-rent.shtml

http://m.autoblog.com/2014/11/25/will-copyright-law-stop-you-from-working-on-your-car-in-the-near/?post=3&icid=autoblog_river_article

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/11/what-should-a-bayesian-infer-from-the-antikythera-mechanism.html

http://online.wsj.com/articles/automation-makes-us-dumb-1416589342

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 853 Sunday, November 30, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Minneapolis will close ‘suspension gap’

November 12, 2014 by Joanne

Minneapolis public schools will try to eliminate the “suspension gap” by reviewing discipline of black, Latino and Native American students. The move is part of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which has ben investigating high suspension rates for black students.

“MPS must aggressively reduce the disproportionality between black and brown students and their white peers every year for the next four years,” the agreement states. “This will begin with a 25 percent reduction in disproportionality by the end of this school year; 50 percent by 2016; 75 percent by 2017; and 100 percent by 2018.”

This year, the district has cut suspensions by more than half by using alternatives for non-violent behavior, such as talking back to a teacher. Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson said teachers are being trained to handle student behavior in the classroom, reports Minnesota Public Radio.

– See more at: http://www.joannejacobs.com/2014/11/minneapolis-will-close-suspension-gap/#sthash.dZP6DL9l.dpuf

Good morning, Dr. Pournelle,

I saw this article, and wondered if you had seen it:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/11261872/James-Watson-selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html

I’m torn between disgust at those who disagree with him, and sadness over how far we have fallen as a society.

Regards,

Don Parker

James Watson selling Nobel prize ‘because no-one wants to admit I exist’

World-famous biologist James Watson said he is selling the Nobel Prize medal he won in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA because he has been ostracised and needs the money

By Keith Perry

James Watson, the world-famous biologist who was shunned by the scientific community after linking intelligence to race, said he is selling his Nobel Prize because he is short of money after being made a pariah.

Mr. Watson said he is auctioning the Nobel Prize medal he won in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA, because "no-one really wants to admit I exist".

Auctioneer Christie’s said the gold medal, the first Nobel Prize to be sold by a living recipient, could fetch as much as $3.5m (£2.23m) when it is auctioned in New York on Thursday. The reserve price is $2.5m.

Mr. Watson told the Financial Times he had become an “unperson” after he “was outed as believing in IQ” in 2007 and said he would like to use money from the sale to buy a David Hockney painting.

Mr. Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for uncovering the double helix structure of DNA, sparked an outcry in 2007 when he suggested that people of African descent were inherently less intelligent than white people.

* * *

Mr. Watson – who insisted he was “not a racist in a conventional way” – said it had been “stupid” of him to not realise that his comments on the intelligence of African people would end up in an article.

“I apologise . . . [the journalist] somehow wrote that I worried about the people in Africa because of their low IQ – and you’re not supposed to say that.”

In 2007, the Sunday Times ran an interview with Dr Watson in which he said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.

He told the newspaper people wanted to believe that everyone was born with equal intelligence but that those “who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/11261872/James-Watson-selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html

I doubt Watson said “people of African descent are inherently less intelligent than white people”, because it is easily possible to interpret that to mean that all whites are intellectually superior to all those of African descent, and that is obviously and demonstrably untrue: a falsified hypothesis.

What is true is that the differential psychology community seems agreed that if you accept people to be members of the race they say they belong to, then the mean intelligence scores among the races will rank in order, from Ashkenazi Jews as highest, followed by North Asians, White, Hispanic, and Black. The differences in means vary with the instrument used for the measure, but the rank orders are consistent and have been for many years, (in fact many decades) despite vigorous efforts to reduce cultural effects on scores. This is given in tedious detail in dozens of peer reviewed academic studies, and has been commented on by many best selling books, including “The Mismeasurement of Man” by Stephen Jay Gould, and The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein. Gould says it’s all mistaken measurement and has no merit; The Bell Curve tries to stay away from race but concludes that IQ is about 60% determined by heredity. The Bell Curve was denounced at a AAAS meeting at which the chairman of the special session on the book announced at its opening that he had not read the book, nor would he ever; after which he invited discussion.

In other academic discussions and debates The Bell Curve remains controversial, as does the notion that IQ is at all determined by genetics and heredity. Nevertheless, the differences in mean IQ of the different races – generally determined by what race the subject claims to be – show those mean differences, the mean for Ashkenazi Jews about a standard deviation above the mean for Whites, with the mean for Asians falling between them; and the mean for Blacks about a standard deviation below that of Whites, with the mean for Hispanics falling between them.

The Head Start program, which had the approval of nearly everyone who was aware of it, was an attempt to wipe out the IQ differences by giving early exposure to schooling to minority children (as well as better nutrition to those in poverty). While there are studies showing many beneficial effects of Head Start while pupils are enrolled in it, no study yet devised has been able to show significant differences in IQ between those who were in the program and those who were not four years after they left the program.

There have been few programs that accepted the mean IQ differences and went on from there to attempt to deal with that as a fact, so we do not know what to do if IQ is largely determined by heredity, and there are mean racial differences. Should bright kids get a different education from average children? Should “dull normal” children have classes with more emphasis on training and skill development, normal have a mixed bag of skill and abstract intellectual education, and bright to very bright have more emphasis on abstract intellectual matters, mathematics, geometry, algebra, etc.? The literature is full of speculations about this subject.

Of course we are mostly discussing public schools paid by taxes; there are plenty of private schools supported by the wealthy who generally avoid the average public school system. There are also religious schools which have held to higher intellectual standards. There are charter schools and other specially organized school paid for by public money, but they are generally opposed by teachers’ unions, and have often been closed by public action.

The Bell Curve noted that the meritocratic society tended to move high IQ people together, and thus was likely to strengthen the hereditary factor in IQ transmission – assuming there is one.  It is generally assumed that breeding smart dogs to each other produces smarter puppies, so it is not unreasonable to suppose this might happen with people. Wealthy people tend to avoid the public schools, or to make the public schools in their neighborhoods somewhat different from those available to everyone else.  The question of different education for different people is very much subject to that effect, but it is of little value to those of low IQ.  ”No Child Left Behind” has resulted in schools in which No Child Gets Ahead, and gives another reason for those who can afford it to avoid the public school system.

I do not usually recommend Slate articles, but I can recommend this one:

Created Equal 
Race, Genes And Intelligence
By William Saletan
Slate Online
11-25-7

"Among white Americans, the average IQ, as of a decade or so ago, was 103. Among Asian-Americans, it was 106. Among Jewish Americans, it was 113. Among Latino Americans, it was 89. Among African-Americans, it was 85. Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70. One IQ table shows 113 in Hong Kong, 110 in Japan, and 100 in Britain. White populations in Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States score closer to one another than to the worldwide black average. It’s been that way for at least a century." "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" – Declaration of Independence

Last month, James Watson, the legendary biologist, was condemned and forced into retirement after claiming that African intelligence wasn’t "the same as ours." "Racist, vicious and unsupported by science," said the Federation of American Scientists. " Utterly unsupported by scientific evidence," declared the U.S. government’s supervisor of genetic research. The New York Times told readers that when Watson implied "that black Africans are less intelligent than whites, he hadn’t a scientific leg to stand on."

I wish these assurances were true. They aren’t. Tests do show an IQ deficit, not just for Africans relative to Europeans, but for Europeans relative to Asians. Economic and cultural theories have failed to explain most of the pattern, and there’s strong preliminary evidence that part of it is genetic. It’s time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true.

http://www.rense.com/general79/dut.htm

 

[I received this after posting the above:

William Saletan

The link for the article you posted went to rense.com, not slate.com. The linked article included none of the links that you thought were there. When I went to slate and searched, I was unable to find the original article with the links, etc. I don’t know if this means that slate deleted the article, that my search skills are underpar, or that it wasn’t posted on slate.

Fredrik Coulter

There were internal statements in the essay that led me to believe it was or had been published in Slate. I confess I didn’t check, and in fact the original place of publication isn’t important. It is a contribution to rational discussion of the subject.  Monday, December 1 10:00 AM]

It is a very long article  and carefully argued.

The question is of great importance. The ruin of the public school system is obvious to most, and activities like that of the Minneapolis school system to force the schools to punish students in proportion to the racial numbers in the classes is, while perhaps well intended, is going to have unpleasant and unwanted effects. I leave those to your imagination.

Now, no one I know advocates segregating children by race; but many believe, as I do, that dull, average, and bright children need different kinds of education, and forcing all to pretend to an equality that isn’t there is counterproductive. The kids know better. The teachers know better. In general even the reporters playing the game to get a story know better. There are bright kids and dull kids.

The problem comes when you sort the kids on performance, and the groups have racial proportions different from their prevalence in the general population. It is immediately assumed to be racial, even if the sorting mechanism has no racial components whatsoever and those scoring the tests are unaware of the race of those taking them. Unequal outcomes are assumed to be racially determined.

If you are trying to give each kid the education that is best for that student, you must take into account the potential. An IQ 88 student is not going to master calculus and while it is not impossible for him – or her – to master algebra, doing that will take a great deal of time and attention which would have been better devoted to learning something he – or she – can master. Most of those will be skilled labor or sales jobs, not abstract symbol manipulation ; in other words, skills that are learned by training . All this should be obvious.

It should also be obvious that half the children are below average, and a quarter are in the lowest 25% in intelligence. 

Let me once more remind you: half the jobs people are doing now can likely be done by a robot which can be purchased for about the annual cost of the person now doing that job. [If this is not strictly true in November, 2014, Moore’s Law and its corollaries pretty well assures us it will be true by 2020.]  The government keeps interest rates low. The maintenance costs of the robot will be about 10% a year of what is at present being paid in salary, health care, pension funding, washrooms and comfort facilities, etc. Perhaps we are not there now, but we are approaching that time very rapidly.

And the public schools are increasingly unable to teach anyone to do anything that some else would pay much money to have them do.

Meanwhile, Dr. Watson is selling his Nobel Prize at public auction, and the intelligentsia seems proud of that accomplishment.

1100 Monday December 1, 2014   I received this, and it should be here:

The Links at Slate

Jerry,

Here are the links at Slate for Mr. Saletan’s series, including a response by Stephen Metcalf

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/features/2007/created_equal/liberalcreationism.html>

Liberal Creationism — William Saletan. 11/18/2007

"Last month, James Watson, the legendary biologist, was condemned and forced into retirement after claiming that African intelligence wasn’t "the same as ours." "Racist, vicious and unsupported by science," said the Federation of American Scientists. "Utterly unsupported by scientific evidence," declared the U.S. government’s supervisor of genetic research. The New York Times told readers that when Watson implied "that black Africans are less intelligent than whites, he hadn’t a scientific leg to stand on."

I wish these assurances were true. They aren’t…."

<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/features/2007/created_equal/environmentalimpact.html>

Environmental Impact — William Saletan, 11/19/2007

"Yesterday we looked at evidence for a genetic theory of racial differences in IQ. Today let’s look at some of the arguments against it. Again, I’m drawing heavily on a recent exchange of papers published by the American Psychological Association.

One objection is that IQ tests are racially biased. This is true in the broadest sense: On average, African and Asian kids have different advantages, and IQ tests focus on the things at which more Asian kids have the edge. But in the narrower sense of testing abilities that pay off in the modern world, IQ tests do their job. They accurately predict the outcomes of black and white kids at finishing high school, staying employed, and avoiding poverty, welfare, or jail…."

<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/features/2007/created_equal/all_gods_children.html>

All God’s Children — William Saletan 11/20/2007

"Why write about this topic? Why hurt people’s feelings? Why gratify bigots?

Because truth matters. Because the truth isn’t as bad as our ignorant, half-formed fears and suspicions about it. And because you can’t solve a problem till you understand it.

Two days ago, I said we could fight the evidence of racial differences in IQ, or we could accept it. Yesterday, I outlined the difficulty of fighting it. What happens if we accept it? Can we still believe in equality?…."

<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/features/2007/created_equal/regrets.html>

Regrets — William Saletan, 11/28/2007

" Last week, I wrote about the possibility of genetic IQ differences among races. I wanted to discuss whether egalitarianism could survive if this scenario, raised last month by James Watson, turned out to be true. I thought it was important to lay out the scenario’s plausibility. In doing so, I short-circuited the conversation. Most of the reaction to what I wrote has been over whether the genetic hypothesis is true, with me as an expert witness…."

And a response to Mr. Saletan’s Posts

< http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_dilettante/2007/12/dissecting_the_iq_debate.html>

Dissecting the IQ Debate — Stephen Metcalf 12/3/2007

A response to William Saletan’s series on race and IQ.

"In response to James Watson’s remarks concerning the intelligence of blacks, Slate’s William Saletan wrote a series of pieces on race, IQ, and genetics. In his first post, Saletan wrote: "It’s time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true." One’s to-do list reflects a balance of perceived likelihoods. Is preparing for the congenital mental inferiority of blacks more like budgeting for retirement, or buying asteroid insurance? Caveats and wiggle words aside, the impression left by Saletan’s piece is that it’s more like, say, a prudent response to rising sea levels. To drive the point home, Saletan suggested a historical parallel: Liberals made angry or defensive by the possibility that blacks (as a group) score lower on IQ tests than whites (as a group) for genetic reasons are like Christians made angry or defensive by the theory of evolution. Thus the headline "Liberal Creationism…."

There is enough scientific evidence for a genetic difference in mean intelligence between the races to warrant considerable attention to the probability that it is true, and the implications of that.  There is also considerable evidence that education ought to be different for people widely different in IQ.  Jobs that would drive high IQ people mad can be performed very well by less gifted workers who rightly feel valued for doing the work: we have known that in the aircraft assembly business for seventy years, and I had experience with the phenomenon as a psychologist with the Boeing Company in the 1950’s.  We ignore these probabilities at our peril, and the dreary state of the schools is more evidence of this.

Blacks in America.

As a Jewish-American, I can remember another person who characterized people as ‘barbarians’, consequently, I don’t think that framing is useful.

To counter the ‘Old White Man’s Echo Chamber’, you should read this piece by the author Kiese Laymon, "My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK <http://gawker.com/my-vassar-college-faculty-id-makes-everything-ok-1664133077> ", which provides a counterpoint to the dehumanizing stereotypes you’re so casually invoking.

However, the most clear and concise observation in all this is certainly Xaviar Holland’s, "In these potentially violent times in Ferguson, I think it’s important to look at the example MLK set. His quiet dignity. His restraint. How he was able to show compassion even under duress. How he got shot in the fucking face anyway."

You’ve lived long enough to make it to the 21st Century. Re-examine your 19th Century beliefs because the context has changed.

Mike Lieman

A barbarian, in contrast to a civilized person, puts his personal and tribal desires far above those of the welfare of the society he lives in. Tribalism and barbarism are so far as I can tell the natural state of mankind; I will leave it to anthropologists to argue the matter. Civilization is something learned and imposed, and is far more fragile than most think: as perhaps the Jews in the Weimar Republic discovered (See I Am a Camera, or the musical version known as Cabaret.)

A variation on Mr. Heinlein’s observation…

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/jack-perry/an-armed-society/

This article considers the relationship between Arizona’s minimalist infringements on the Second Amendment and the absence of rioting and looting in Phoenix and Tucson even though called for by the agitators.

Charles Brumbelow

See comment to the letter above.

Dear Jerry,

You might be interested in what Fred says about Ferguson and barbarism.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/BlackPower.shtml

http://www.fredoneverything.net/MoreCannibals.shtml

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Ferguson.shtml

H

Fred is an old friend.  He says nothing he doesn’t believe, and he has thought about it before he says it.  We do not always agree, but we respect each others’ views and I always find good food for thought in his columns. He is as aware as I am that there are African Americans at all intelligence levels.

I have always thought the law ought to be color blind.  I believe so now.  I have no objection to private associations promoting any group they would like to promote, whether they choose beneficiaries by race, religion, national origin, sex, hair color, whim, or a Ouija Board; but I believe public policy should take account of individual abilities, not race, and should not be forbidden to do so.

‘Unfulfilled by such a victory for peace and freedom, unwilling to go home when our war, the Cold War, was over, Bush 43 decided to bring the entire Warsaw Pact, three Baltic states, and Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. For this project, Bush had the enthusiastic support of McCain, the neocons and the liberal interventionists.’

<http://takimag.com/article/hagel_didnt_start_the_fire_patrick_buchanan/print>

——–

Roland Dobbins

I more or less said this at the time, but apparently no one was listening.  The day that George H W Bush moved into the White House, all the Reagan people were gone. And while I hate to agree with Putin, his description of their behavior when The Wall fell as “Triumphalism” rings fairly true.  [I admit to participating in some of that myself.] Reagan would never have made that mistake; he would have built golden bridges for the Russians to transition from communist ruin to increasing prosperity . Then came the Balkan crisis and Mr. Clinton and Secretary Albright, who preferred to make enemies of the pan-Slavic Russians bombed the Serbs without understanding the Balkans at all, and with no idea of what American interests – if any – were involved. The cost was enormous.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.